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< The Dangers of IVF | Features | What Color Were Dinosaurs? Now Fossils Have the Answer >

Loving the Unknown Neighbor

By Robyn Broyles, February 15, 2010 10:31

Can you love someone you have never met? How about someone you don't even know exists?

The Communion of Saints, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, includes all angels and humans who have ever existed, except for the damned. One might say that a person "accesses" this communion through a relationship with God.

I am not aware of every individual person in the Communion of Saints, nor am I able to have this knowledge in this world. Yet I am connected to every individual person through my own membership in the Communion of Saints. Part of that membership includes the directive to love everyone in the Communion (that is, they are all my neighbor). So it seems personal knowledge is not necessary.

My answer to the question, then, is an unqualified "yes." It does not matter what parameters define a group of neighbors, whether those parameters are personal or impersonal; I am connected to every person. Thus one can love any person, even vaguely defined, through the Communion of Saints.

Without Christian mysticism (i.e. the Communion of Saints), one cannot love someone with whom there is no connection. The closest you can come is to love the idea of a person or group.

Based on the above, I have realized that when I experience love for people I can't ever know, I am experiencing proof of the existence of the Communion of Saints.

This article was originally published April 10, 2008, and was inspired by an old post on the blog Darwin Catholic. It has been edited slightly from the original.

Tags: catholic beliefs, catholic life, saints, communion of saints, love, relationships

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